LI.

plato was a piece of shit.
plato was an existence denying nihilist.
plato taught everyone about ideal forms, and
some have called it plato’s poison,
and we’re still poisoned by it. you know how
the way we think we’re just some rotten copy of the more perfect
and how we all want to be just-so-perfect
and for some reason we keep people around us who believe in perfection
and constantly measure us up to it
to the point that we start measuring ourselves up to it?
in a way, plato was right — nobody on earth is an ideal form: sure.
but he fucked up when he tried to teach us that there were ideal forms at all.
sorry, but I’m not sorry plato:
we’re sticky, stinky fucked up messes with rotten teeth
and we grow hair all over the place
and sometimes we wanna kill ourselves
and sometimes we wanna drink ourselves into oblivion
and sometimes we wanna smash our fucking phones and all the contacts in them.
we live a variety of different bodies, none better than the other
and sometimes we eat too much ice cream
and sometimes we eat too much candy
and a lot of the time our body punishes us for it
and sometimes we sleep too late
or don’t sleep at all
or say hurtful things to people that we care about
and cheat on exams
and cheat on each other
and fall in love with people who are awful for us
and spend far too much time getting away from those awful people
and do all sorts of other things that don’t make all that much sense.
but that only makes sense if you feel like it has to make sense,
like all these things have to measure up to some sort of ideal —
when in reality, in existence,
there are just a variety of different ways to go, and none of them are ideal
regardless of what plato said.
because in the end, plato was a life denying nihilist
and even though we’re sometimes nihilists too and it feels really good to say it’s all meaningless,
our head is haunted with little plato’s, and it’s time for us to kill them

we were laying shoulder to shoulder
in my dark room, when
i sat up, stretched my arms out
touching both the top of your head
and the bottom of your feet at the same time and said,
"i love everything about you.
you don’t ever need to be anything different,
your body is wonderful."
and you cried.
and i held you.
and i knew how important this was,
because fuck everybody else who has ever said anything different to you.